Increase the Pressure

Adult Advisor

Suzanne Blockburger

Team Members

Luke Turkington (age:17)

Alex Reeder (age:16)

Blythe Spiers (age:16)

Project Outline

Our project involves reducing CO2 emissions released into the atmosphere by vehicles. We will be educating the public on how vehicles with low tire pressure consume more gas and emit more carbon than vehicles with properly inflated tires, as well as offering free tire inflation. Our team will be meeting every week at Utah’s Hogle Zoo, where we all volunteer. We plan on using the zoo’s North and South parking lots as the staging point for our project.
During the summer months, traffic through these two parking lots can be immense. On the days that we meet, our team will set up a station at the entrance and exit of one or both of the parking lots. At these stations zoo guests can get their tires inflated for free. We will also be calculating how many more miles-per-gallon of gas each vehicle will receive with properly inflated tires depending on how under inflated they were. Using this information as well as information received from each driver (i.e. how often they drive, distances, etc..) and external factors such as temperature, we will be able to calculate how many fewer pounds of CO2 each car emits into the atmosphere over a one month period.
Our hope is that, knowing how much gas they can save, drivers will continue to observe and maintain their tire pressure in the future. We also are striving to get as many people involved as possible. We are going to be rallying support from other volunteers at the zoo as well as from staff members in hopes of not only increasing our working capacity, but also expanding knowledge of this topic to as many people as possible.